By Sen. Matthew Harrington

(Editor’s Note: This column originally appeared in the Portland Press Herald.)

All around Maine, state, county and local law enforcement agencies issue press releases listing individuals who were recently arrested and the nature of the arrests. Some of these are eventually published in Maine’s media outlets.

This disclosure of information keeps law enforcement agencies transparent to the public, especially if the detainee is of particular notoriety or the underlying crime is serious enough. The public is then aware at the front end of the criminal justice process that something has happened in their community.

In some cases, suspects are eventually prosecuted through a criminal trial in the State’s Judicial Branch.  In other cases, defendants may reach a plea bargain with prosecutors at the state or county level.  Either way, there is a resolution to the case; and that resolution, or what we call disposition, is public knowledge.

But what happens if the subject of the arrest is never charged and a complaint is never filed with the state’s Judicial Branch, thereby never getting onto the Unified Criminal Docket?  The public never knows what happened.

Now, cases are dropped for a variety of reasons.  Perhaps prosecutors felt there wasn’t enough evidence.  I often disagree – Maine’s law enforcement officers don’t arrest people willy-nilly.  Over the years of my law enforcement career, I had articulable probable cause at the start of an incident or investigation and supporting evidence by the end of it to make the arrest. That is just how we’re trained.

However, county district attorneys or even the Attorney General’s Office can use what they call “prosecutorial discretion” to simply drop cases. They can do this even when there is overwhelming evidence, which is not only disrespectful to the law enforcement personnel who went through the arrest process but also a dereliction of their duty to the public.  I’d even call it lazy.

The problem is the public doesn’t even know this is happening. And, unfortunately, I see it happening way too often. The lack of transparency between arrests and prosecutions can easily lead to a lack of accountability, an erosion of public trust and make it difficult to identify and address systemic issues within the criminal justice system.

This opacity makes it challenging for the public to understand how arrests turn into prosecutions and why certain cases are pursued while others are not. That’s why I introduced LD 1823, “An Act to Promote Transparency in the Criminal Justice System by Requiring the Posting of Criminal Case Decisions.” My bill seeks to address the gap in transparency that occurs when an arrest is made but no further action is taken by a district attorney or the attorney general.

What’s interesting is the Office of the Attorney General does publish a list of cases they want to highlight, which may be more for political purposes than anything else. What you don’t see are the number of cases they drop or choose not to pursue, which has garnered attention at both the state level and in certain counties where DAs chose not to prosecute certain offenses or said they didn’t have the staffing.

Public access to case information that does make it through the Judicial Branch is already available for certain cases through their eCourts system. In fact, the Judicial Branch will be expanding the eCourts system to include criminal cases in the near future.

Yet district attorneys are elected officials and the public that elects them has a right to know about the prosecutorial decisions they are making.  That goes the same for Maine’s attorney general, who is elected by the Legislature.

Just as legislators are accountable to their constituents for the votes they take, district attorneys and Maine’s attorney general should be able to be held accountable for the decisions they make in the course of their duties.

Senator Matthew Harrington represents District 33, which includes the communities of Alfred, Lebanon, Sanford and Waterboro. He is the Assistant Senate Republican Leader and serves on the Energy, Utilities and Technology Committee and the Legislative Council. Sen. Harrington also serves as a municipal police officer in York County.